Suchergebnisse

Regional power pools present a significant and potentially defining opportunity for African power systems to develop domestic energy resources, improve system reliability, and contribute to overall economic development. Hydropower is expected to play a significant role in many regional power pools in Africa. Feasible power transmission highways from Grand Inga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia to other regions on the continent create the possibility of a pan-African electricity grid. However, in the medium and long term, global climate change is expected to cause major variations in Africa's hydrological resources and it is not known how these changes may impact the value of regional power sector integration. This paper presents a model developed to study the value of different levels of regional integration in sub-Saharan Africa and how this value may change in the face of climate change. This work builds on previous studies by incorporating the ability to trade between different regional pools, co-optimisation of generation and transmission, the ability to share reserves, and detailed simulation of the major hydropower basins in Africa. Numerical results of the analysis will be presented in a parallel paper.

China has recently reinvigorated reforms to its electricity sector, focusing on increasing the role of markets and improving regulation. While restructuring an electricity sector is difficult and can require years of detailed planning, China's approach relies upon broad central guidelines with many details and initiatives left to provincial governments. We assess the current state of reform efforts through the lens of five "pitfalls" based on well-established regulatory economics literature and international lessons, focusing on contract structure, system operation, and regulation. We find that while market efforts are likely to achieve efficiency gains with respect to the planned system, they may fall short of crucial functions of a market, such as incentivizing flexibility given increasing renewable energy penetrations. Making markets work will likely require a stronger centralization of market design and regulatory oversight authorities.

High levels of inflexible bilateral trade in southern Africa have limited the participation in the competitive short-term markets, leading to inefficient use of energy infrastructure and blocking the South African Power Pool's long-term goal of transitioning from a cooperative to competitive market. Under the current supply and investment climate, governments and market participants are unlikely to forego their preference for long-term contracts owing to concerns about security of supply and risk mitigation. In this paper, we demonstrate that the current method for integrating bilateral and market trading introduces inefficiencies in the use of generation and transmission infrastructure, reduces total trade, and increases system costs. We propose and test an alternative method based on contracts for differences and implicit auctions to ensure the same level of security of supply for contract holders while minimising market distortions.